


Indiana

by resurrectionmercy



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Comfort, Growing Old Together, Home, Love, M/M, One Shot, Road Trips, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-11 19:25:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15978869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resurrectionmercy/pseuds/resurrectionmercy
Summary: Nothing here has changed. Not the warm welcome, the gentle hug of Jack's mother or the tight embrace of his father, the firm handshakes they both share with Gabriel, or the food, or the ash trees with their crooked old branches above the peeling paint of the picket fence.





	Indiana

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zombieheroine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zombieheroine/gifts).



> Some R76 for friends. <3

* * *

  
The landscape shouldn't be described as breath-taking, but after so long in hyper-modern cities, after so long without a break in the midst of all that buzzing and hurry and traffic and the constant pollution of light and noise, Jack feels like he's finally reached somewhere he can feel at peace. The car's sliding soundlessly forwards; soundless to him and almost so to the environment, leaving behind what once (yesterday, and the day before then) seemed like an  _endless_  road scurrying and turning and zig-zagging across the United States. Beside him, soaking in the sunlight, rests Gabriel - that bastard. Jack looks at him and a smile tugs at his lips and he doesn't want to shiver but he does so regardless, not from a chill but from that damned warmth that never stops flooding him like an injection in his veins when he looks at that man. Gabriel's all warm bark dark skin, thick hair to match it, and that sharp focus even though he's nothing but relaxed here. Something in him just never gives, and Jack thinks that's what brought him to Blackwatch. To Overwatch. That sharpness, that edge and that specific roughness, it's what caught someone's attention once. What made them soldiers, he realises. It goes that far back.

And god, aren't they getting old?

The gold of Indiana spreads ahead of them. It seems endless, though Jack should know better. He's breached those borders today but even before then, he left that vastness of his once home behind, and yet in his heart, it feels as if he's carried it with him until now when finally he feels as if his heart's no longer locking that landscape within its all too limited restraints. It's burst out of him like a bonfire, blasting the sky deep, deep blue and purple where the sun is by now leaving this day behind them, and the fields golden and wavering like a different reality, waiting for the harvest and the transformation from growth season to another lull. Something in him wants to shake Gabriel awake, but it's stupid. What for?

_Look. Look, Gabe. This is my home._

He's seen it a good ten times before. All of it. Oh, lord. They've been here before. This path, this unpaved track, towards a farmhouse, where he once was nothing but a country boy, a kid with scraped knees and the smell of cattle catching his clothing, with hay in his hair. That kind of a country boy. The traditional type, with his mother picking that hay out of his golden hair. So innocent. Not so today, but here... he feels refreshened, as if he  _could_  be nothing more than that boy again. Not a soldier, not a commander. No - just himself, with Gabe, the man his heart chose for him.

Grimacing, he lets his hand go anyway, presses his palm against Gabe's stubbled cheek, and pushes him. Gabriel groans, and Jack's stupid smile just grows from it. His chest seems to shrink around his heart that beats a little faster, and his eyes dart towards Gabriel as he stirs, blinking his heavy lids until his gaze focuses on Jack. He gets that smile, too, after trying hard to look annoyed at first. His eyes reflect the sunset's amber and Jack wants to drive their car into the ditch, grab him by the back of his neck and pull him in, taste him, crawl next to him and soak into his skin until they're one and the same and Indiana becomes the ocean to the foam that they've turned into. The distance of skin on skin is too much, so much, that he can barely handle it, that deep, aching loneliness of being an individual so close to the hearth of his heart.

"What?" Gabriel asks him, that rawness of sleep still in his voice.  
He clears it away immediately, tasting the remains of it and licking his lips for the aftertaste. It doesn't seem to please him; the brightness of the burning sun ahead, the shimmer of its last glow reflecting from the bowing wheat surrounding them.  
"We there yet? Indiana?"

Jack nods.  
"Close to home now, Gabriel."

An ease of some kind settles even into Gabe, it seems. Jack chuckles at the sight, the way his already tense shoulders fall down and round back again. He slams his shoulder blades back into the car's seat and lets out a gruffy laugh, like a tiger fresh from deep slumber. He runs his hand over his neck and sighs, looking down at his lap.

"Tell you the truth, Jack," he says then, his voice following the same kind of purr as the large cat Jack envisioned before, "I can't wait to sleep in a real bed. Your parents have never been anything but accommodating."

"Personally, I can't wait for dinner," Jack laughs, his focus now back on the road in full. "Plates full of good, hearty food... and the sugar cream pie I didn't get anywhere else. Remember the last time we passed by and I tried my damn best to find a diner that would serve it like they do here at home? And I could find nowhere that was quite like Indiana. Even so close to the border, there was just - nothing."

"I remember that. I remember being pissed off at you, mostly. You didn't deserve that."  
Gabriel laughs.  
"Well, I hope you'll get your pie now. I'm still full of whatever  _that_  was that we ate straight out of the paper bag. Jack, I'm getting older. No, really, I am. It seems that my body craves for something... not deep fried, you know?"

"I know, Gabe. Mine too. But it was good, pretending to be that way again. Heh. You'll get something fresh when we're home. Juice, if nothing else."

"Looking forwards to that."  
  


* * *

  
Nothing here has changed. Not the warm welcome, the gentle hug of Jack's mother or the tight embrace of his father, the firm handshakes they both share with Gabriel, or the food, or the ash trees with their crooked old branches above the peeling paint of the picket fence. The roads are ever as dusty, the farmland as lush and in as much balance with the surrounding wild lands, the patches of forest and the ditches and the birds and the rabbits, as it's always been. The fields remain awash in gold as Jack settles by the window, and old song on his lips as barely a hum, and Gabriel's on the bed on his back with his tablet in hand, carelessly skipping past articles that illuminate his face in the otherwise darkened room.

"It feels strange somehow," Jack says after a while, "I have this ache in me. Like I'm about to lose something."

"It's just homesickness, Jack. You'll feel better by tomorrow evening. Maybe."

"You get this too?"

Gabriel nods, grunting as he swipes another article down and then simply places his tablet with its face against his chest, eyes roaming the ceiling now instead.  
"Kind of like the bottom of your stomach just goes away, and there's something hanging onto your heartstrings, trying to pull it into that void. It goes away, Jack."

"But why would I miss home when I'm here? It doesn't make any sense."

Gabriel looks at him. Jack swears he's got a chuckle coming up, but it never breaks the silence. He's just got that look on him, that look like he wants to laugh at Jack, give him that warm bark of  _yes, Jack, I'm sure about this._

"It's not this home you're missing," Gabriel says then, the chuckle lingering in his voice and confirming Jack's suspicion, "You're nostalgic for the home that's not here anymore. Being a boy, seeing these same damn walls from a different perspective, about three foot down from where you're standing now. I get it, Jack, I was a kid once too. I had a home, not like this, but I had a home and I do miss that fucking place sometimes. It's just you getting old. There's nothing ominous about it. You're mourning the loss of something sweet and good that you can't have back. It's human. Dwell on that and then let it go, it's the only thing you can do."

Jack feels like he's right. He nods, simply, and turns for the window, letting his eyes linger on the swing he used to play in as a boy, still hanging from one of the trees tied with hemp ropes to the thickest, lowest branch. He knows if he sat on it now the ropes would fall apart, not for his weight but for their own age, and that pain - and yes, it's pain - in his chest flashes like a cut of a dagger. He flinches and shudders, then pulls himself up and brings himself to the bed beside Gabriel. There, he settles next to him on his side and runs his palm up to the man's chest, picks up his tablet, moves it to the side and replaces it with his own palm directly over the man's heart. It beats so reassuringly, so strongly and with such heat that the desire to sink into Gabriel resumes in him. Sighing, he rests his head on the other man's body and feels Gabriel's hand in his hair, stroking him slowly, gently, through his hair, his fingertips ever rougher than Jack's hair, which still stands thick and prickly somehow every time he trims it back to this length. When it grows longer, it assumes a much smoother state, a texture that is as if waxed, but not sticky. Gabriel's hair grows smooth in a different way - it's thick, yes, but it never turns prickly like Jack's. It likes to curl into waves when it grows longer, like it is now, shaved from the sides and longer from the top, with just one white stray directly over his forehead. Jack feels like he's been getting whiter every day between the gold of his hair. By the end of the year he'll be like an oddly pale calico cat of gold and platinum colours.

"It's alright, Jack. It's alright to miss the things that were good. Just don't lose focus on what's good now."

"No. I won't. You know me, Gabe - and my focus."

"So, what's good now?"

Jack smiles, closing his eyes.  
"This," he says then, "You, us, the quiet in this room, the crickets, and the fact that we're no longer on the road."

"Good. You're still with me."

Jack lifts his head, shifts - he pulls up closer, his knee moving over Gabriel's thigh, and he looks him in the eye and smiles at him with a quiet laugh between them, and they kiss each other, Jack's eyes closing before Gabriel's but opening before his. Their mouths linger against one another after the kiss breaks, touching but not joining again, until their breaths finally untangle and Jack tucks his head beside Gabriel's.

"What time did you set the alarm for?" he asks, his voice mumbling and weary.

"Five, like at the barracks. We'll run for an hour, have breakfast with your parents; I bet they're old enough now to be waking up with us."

Jack nods.  
"But don't move until that alarm. Not for a piss, Gabe."

Gabriel laughs.  
"What, you scared of the dark now?"

"No. It's just so fucking good here, Gabe, and I ain't gonna miss one moment of it."

"Got it, Commander."

Jack's smile is crooked. He falls asleep with it.


End file.
